This is the thread where the fringster comes back with teeth

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

Next time you are in New Orleans, go to Cochon and try the barbecued oysters with house-cured bacon. You will change your mind about this statement with the first taste.

Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may I say.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I've talked about this with people 'in the know' -- people who work professionally in dealing with alcoholism, and/or have gone through rehab themselves. The issue isn't regularity, but dependence. One person told me that he was actually shocked to learn, back in his early rehab days, that people actually drink alcohol because they like the taste. He didn't even realize it tasted good, despite having drunk a few carloads of booze in his time. I think you're a big distance from that.

One of my closest friends got to the point that she'd drink wine that had been opened for a few days and turned bad. Didn't seem to notice or care that it was downright awful. She lived down the street from me for years, and would stop by my house two or three times a week. I'd hide the booze in my house from her and stopped stocking wine all together, because I knew three or four bottles would be emptied if she came by. So did her roommate, who eventually moved out because of the drinking. It was really, really hard to talk to her about it, and several of us tried. But it wasn't until my boyfriend, another addict (15 years clean off of cocaine) came into our circle of friends that she had someone to talk to in langauage that she could understand that she started thinking about trying to quit. She tried on her own, and failed miserably, and then went to outpatient rehab.

It's been a year. She stopped going to meetings after about four months; she sort of thought of those meetings as being cultish. She says that she can control it now, but I'm not so sure. This spring, she had her contract non-renewed, and as of August 31, she's out of a job. I'm pretty sure that her drinking led to the poor performance evaluation that led to the non-renewal of her contract. I'm also pretty sure that had she NOT been through rehab, she would have spent the spring inside a bottle. But the closer and closer she's getting to that August 31 deadline, the more her drinking is becoming something we're worried about. She's moving to Costa Rica next week for a two month clear her head and figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life. I hope that there are meetings in Costa Rica, and I hope that she has the good sense to go to them. I doubt it though.

[Flinty_McFlint]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

I've explained this to you before. The book doesn't have the same compelling sense of drama for others that is has for you.

It is my childlike sense of wonder and fascination with animal excrement that has made me the 14th most desirable poster here (My thanks to the voters).

[Gattigap]

Morning commute, license plate watch, West LA edition.

* Beemer convertible, ZEN LAW. Assholish West LA lawyer with a self-styled sense of humor? No. Woman driver elderly enough to have invented Zen.

* Porsche convertible, MIDL AGE. Flinty slumming in the Southland? No. Kurt Vonnegut lookalike in a baseball cap.

Carry on.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

I've talked about this with people 'in the know' -- people who work professionally in dealing with alcoholism, and/or have gone through rehab themselves. The issue isn't regularity, but dependence. One person told me that he was actually shocked to learn, back in his early rehab days, that people actually drink alcohol because they like the taste. He didn't even realize it tasted good, despite having drunk a few carloads of booze in his time. I think you're a big distance from that.

Alcoholics have no respect for alcohol. If you like it, you cherish its effect, and you realize that if you do it all the time, or make a fool of yourself using it, people will put you in "the cult" and you won't be able to enjoy it anymore. You also won't enjoy it anymore because if you're never sober, there's no high from being drunk, and if there's no high from being drunk, you've effectively killed half the point of drinking. Why risk either?

It's the shift between stone sober and buzzed/loaded that makes drinking fun. The amusement's all in the alteration, at least for me.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

One of my closest friends got to the point that she'd drink wine that had been opened for a few days and turned bad. Didn't seem to notice or care that it was downright awful. She lived down the street from me for years, and would stop by my house two or three times a week. I'd hide the booze in my house from her and stopped stocking wine all together, because I knew three or four bottles would be emptied if she came by. So did her roommate, who eventually moved out because of the drinking. It was really, really hard to talk to her about it, and several of us tried. But it wasn't until my boyfriend, another addict (15 years clean off of cocaine) came into our circle of friends that she had someone to talk to in langauage that she could understand that she started thinking about trying to quit. She tried on her own, and failed miserably, and then went to outpatient rehab.

It's been a year. She stopped going to meetings after about four months; she sort of thought of those meetings as being cultish. She says that she can control it now, but I'm not so sure. This spring, she had her contract non-renewed, and as of August 31, she's out of a job. I'm pretty sure that her drinking led to the poor performance evaluation that led to the non-renewal of her contract. I'm also pretty sure that had she NOT been through rehab, she would have spent the spring inside a bottle. But the closer and closer she's getting to that August 31 deadline, the more her drinking is becoming something we're worried about. She's moving to Costa Rica next week for a two month clear her head and figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life. I hope that there are meetings in Costa Rica, and I hope that she has the good sense to go to them. I doubt it though.

I think your friend needs to revisit her definition of a cult. I assume she was just looking for a disparaging term for group membership in general. The best definition I've heard for a cult is that it combines a high degree of interest in novel religious beliefs with a high degree of tension with society. It seems to me, and I think any person without an axe to grind, that AA is the polar opposite of both. So to your friend, "cult" simply means "group that has expectations of its members." If she thinks that's bad and wrong, her prognosis is very poor.

I shall pray for your friend to my invisible god who wrote a book about himself 2,000 years ago but failed to invent IP law until some years later. He's a bit of a doofus but well-meaning and with a wicked sense of humor.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

I think your friend needs to revisit her definition of a cult. I assume she was just looking for a disparaging term for group membership in general. The best definition I've heard for a cult is that it combines a high degree of interest in novel religious beliefs with a high degree of tension with society. It seems to me, and I think any person without an axe to grind, that AA is the polar opposite of both. So to your friend, "cult" simply means "group that has expectations of its members." If she thinks that's bad and wrong, her prognosis is very poor.

I shall pray for your friend to my invisible god who wrote a book about himself 2,000 years ago but failed to invent IP law until some years later. He's a bit of a doofus but well-meaning and with a wicked sense of humor.

I've spoken with enough AA-types to understand the "cult" concern -- the feeling of being "programmed", of having a mantra, and of there being a religious overlay to the process. I've even heard long-time AA members joke about the cultishness.

But it's effective, and I suspect that different groups are different. As Ebert points out, in any US city there is probably a group meeting nearby within the next hour. That's a lot of groups, all with a guiding philosophy but none with a central authority.

Alcohol addiction is a nightmare, and for anything to intervene between a person and that addiction it's got to be pretty powerful, intrusive, and mind-shaping -- not really a cult, but in some ways reminiscent of a cult (or what people think of as a cult).

Originally Posted by Adder

And which esteemed posters did you think needed to read that?

That article was longer than 30 years dry.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by ironweed

That article was longer than 30 years dry.

No offense or anything, but how would you know?

Originally Posted by Adder

No offense or anything, but how would you know?

I am 108 years old* and spent 30 of them dry during the early part of the 20th Century.

*Several posters should be more than willing to vouch for my age.

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

One of my closest friends got to the point that she'd drink wine that had been opened for a few days and turned bad.

Uh-oh. I have been known to drink the day-after wine, cheap bastard that I am, because throwing it away is a sin. Is a trip to Costa Rica in the cards for me?

[Adder]

Originally Posted by ironweed

I am 108 years old* and spent 30 of them dry during the early part of the 20th Century.

*Several posters should be more than willing to vouch for my age.

Prohibition really put a dent in the cider supply at Applebees, eh?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by ironweed

Uh-oh. I have been known to drink the day-after wine, cheap bastard that I am, because throwing it away is a sin. Is a trip to Costa Rica in the cards for me?

It hasn't had adequate time to breathe until the next morning.

I do the same thing with mayonnaise. And lox.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It hasn't had adequate time to breathe until the next morning.

I do the same thing with mayonnaise. And lox.

We keep the butter in a kitchen cabinet. No fridge.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

But it wasn't until my boyfriend, another addict (15 years clean off of cocaine) came into our circle of friends that she had someone to talk to in langauage that she could understand that she started thinking about trying to quit.

How do you get hooked on that? I can understand going on runs when it's around a lot, but the morning after that stuff, the last goddamn thing on earth anyone wants to do is more of it. Or maybe that's just my weak constitution talking.